Editorial: Ruling sets stage for a long overdue review of NSA surveillance

12:24 AM,
Dec. 19, 2013

Activists dressed as spies protest the National Security Agency's eavesdropping this week in Washington. The scope of the NSA's surveillance program has been under attack since Edward Snowden leaked details.

Written by

the Detroit Free Press Editorial Board

Those are some of the words an astonished U.S. District Court judge in the District of Columbia invoked this week to describe a massive surveillance program in which the National Security Agency is keeping records of virtually every U.S. citizen's phone calls.

In the first public judicial assessment of the NSA dragnet, Judge Richard J. Leon, who was nominated to the federal bench by President George W. Bush on Sept, 10, 2001, held that the program is likely unconstitutional, and enjoined the government from continuing it, although ...